Facts from Israel.
News, strategic reports, assessments, opinion, facts, information.
All you need to understand and report on Israel in a wider world.

Friday, 18 May 2018

Why does the Western media always fall into the Hamas trap?

Did you notice, during the recent mass riots on Israel’s
border with Gaza how the Western media played their knee-jerk role of turning the
violence into an emotional defense of Palestinians and an attack on
Israel?Why do the media always fall into
the terrorist trap?

They always talk of Palestinian civilian deaths instead of dead Hamas or Islamic
Jihad terrorists. The latter would be more truthful, but it wouldn’t make such
tear-jerking headlines, would it?

If truth be told, telling the truth would put
Israel on the moral high ground but that would be against editorial intentions. Tales
of dead babies win every time against a tale of Jews defending their country
against a fomented mob of 40,000.

So take a good look at the photo. These are the real faces
of those killed during the Hamas-motivated suicide riots. They are three of the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists killed by Israeli IDF snipers during the
so-called “protests” on May 14. Of course, they didn’t wear their uniforms as
they herded excited Gazans to the border fence to burn tires creating choking black smokescreens to blind Israeli soldiers as they
feverishly snipped at the border fence or placed explosive devises there.

The vast majority of those killed were paid up members of
the Hamas terror group. This was admitted by both senior Hamas official, Salah
Bardawil, and by Yahiya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Mahmoud Rantisi, a Hamas
terrorist who had been caught and imprisoned by Israel but released in a
prisoner exchange for captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, while grieving
over the death of his son, admitted that his son was a “jihad fighter” and
“an operator in the nukhba,” the Hamas elite force. Like father, like
son. Killers, or potential killers, of Jews.

Of course, you wouldn’t know these things if you read the
Western media or watched their frenetic reporters dressed in flak-jackets and
wearing helmets in front of a background of dramatic bellowing smoke. They
never talk of “jihad,” or “armed struggle,” or that “The
Zionist enemy is our adversary, and there is no room on our land for it. This
is jihad – victory or causing death in the way of Allah!”

These were official Hamas quotes to the people as they bused
them to the border and led them onto the battlefield with the declared intention
of breaking through the flimsy fence to kill soldiers and settlers and, using
concealed knives and guns, to kidnap Jewish villagers and drag them back into
Gaza.

Instead, the media fell into the trap of describing unarmed
Palestinian civilians being killed or injured with “disproportionate force” by
Israelis.

As international law professor, Alan Dershowitz, who went to
visit the border, asked, “Why does the media keep encouraging Hamas
violence?” by their misreporting of the facts.

The reason is that lazy journalists can’t be bothered to do investigative reporting. Had they done so they would know that the IDF
does not open fire indiscriminately. Rather,
the snipers are under the command of an officer and each shot required approval.
What is not known by the lazy journalists is the technology in battle
conditions that enables the soldier to identify and pinpoint terrorist
individuals, some armed, hiding among supportive civilians and leading them in their quest
to get to the border fence. The IDF soldiers may not know the identity of the
terrorists while events are unfolding but, with the use of technology, they can
see how the battlefield is unfolding and who are the major operatives leading
the charge. In numerous cases, the IDF units can see with technological aids who
is carrying weapons, explosives, or items designed to breach the fence. Without
divulging too much about the sophisticated employment of battle technology by
the IDF, which aids the military intelligence in real time on the battlefield, it is possible to kill or maim with accuracy to prevent life-threatening
situations against soldiers or the Israeli civilian population they are
defending and who are living very close to the border. That is why, days later
after the frenzied shallow journalists have printed and aired their emotion-laden reports, the actual facts slowly emerge that the vast majority of those killed
are identified as known terrorists. But by then, the anti-Israel damage has been
done and Hamas declares a huge propaganda victory.

The sad gap between emotion grabbing headlines and facts was exhibited by
the British Daily Express which portrayed Israel as baby-killers with
the lurid headline, “Mother’s agony as baby dies in Gaza gas horror.”

The problem with this troublesome and gruesome lie
was that it conflicted with the Gazan doctor who told AP that the baby in
question had a pre-existing heart condition and that he didn’t believe its
death was caused by tear gas.

Equally repulsive was the nonsense put out by The
Independent newspaper. Referring to the baby’s death, it wrote, “In this
context it is worth reminding ourselves of the worldwide wave of revulsion
against chemical weapons we have seen in recent weeks.”

What has this to do with non-lethal tear gas to break up a demonstration? This was falsely
explained in the article. “Palestinian victims deserve the same sympathy and
protests as anyone else when their children suffer from gassing.”

Get the picture? The grotesque Independent equates
Israel’s use of non-lethal tear gas to break up a mass riot of 40,000
Palestinians to the deliberate barrel-bombing of Syrian civilians by Assad with
deadly chemical weapons. Assad, who has so far killed 600,000 of his own people
and thousands of Palestinians.

It took the Arab media to force Hamas into an admission
that, overwhelmingly, the majority of the dead that resulted from their suicide
riots were Hamas members. An Arab TV interviewer demanded to know why Hamas had allowed
“people’s children to go to their deaths while Hamas reaps the fruit.” Why didn't the Western media ask that question?

To protect the reputation of Hamas, Bardawil claimed. “It cannot be said that Hamas was ‘reaping the fruits.’ It
paid the highest price. Fifty were from Hamas. The figures are official.”

As such, papers such as The Independent and the Daily Express have
become propaganda sheets of the Hamas terror organization and Islamic Jihad, while some in the Arab media know exactly what is going on.

Shame on the Western media. They have totally lost the plot
with their fake news. And they consistently fall into the Hamas trap with their
shallow journalism.

Barry
Shaw is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism.’ He is also the
Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic
Studies.